


Glass

by StrayLiger



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Past Child Abuse, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 03:56:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16508942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrayLiger/pseuds/StrayLiger
Summary: Lasse Aeon knows pain. Or at least, he thought he did.





	Glass

**Author's Note:**

> I put it in the tags but again be weary for depictions of violence and past child abuse and terminal illness because Gundam be like that?
> 
> Ohh boy. This one was heavy to write. I legit have been working on it for like a month, and it's taken a long time because it took me to some real places when writing. Again this is kind of a character study but not really? ANd mostly me projecting myself into a fave, because that's my life. This is SUPER heavily headcanon based so bear with me.
> 
> Tbh I almost didn't post this-half because I was annoyed at it for a while, and half because it was really personal, but here's so little Lasse content and I am salty about it like 900% of the time?
> 
> Anyway I didn't even grammar check this again so get ready for very bad literature. This is exactly like everything I've published so far but sadder.

Lasse Aeon knows pain. Or at least, he thought he did. One cannot go through a childhood like his, tumble into the mafia and join a secret paramilitary organization without being in pain more than a couple of times.

He remembers very clearly the day his father tried to cut his ear off, to make a bookmark out of it, the pain when the knife missed his eye by a few inches and left him with a scar on his chin. He remembers the first time someone stabbed him, in the back, right between the ribs, when he was 16. The first time he was shot, when he was 19, because the scar on his calf never healed properly either and still bothers him sometimes. The time a woman with a very bad temper and too many diamonds around her neck broke a bottle over his head. Lasse remembers his first hangover, the time he fell down the stairs, being punched, kicked, burned, pushed around. Yes, he remembers pain inflicted on him, remembers that at some points of his life he even sought it deliberately.

Even learning how to pilot the Gundams didn’t come without its share of pain: controlling a machine that size, regardless of the feedback system it uses, in low gravity, is difficult. The first few times he found himself at the controls of one of the Gundams, the soreness in his shoulders was enough that he couldn’t raise his arms above his head for a couple of days. He has to wonder how Setsuna learned so fast to pilot, when he is barely a teenager.

Lasse doesn’t mind pain: he likes pushing himself. The burn of stretching muscles, the numbness that comes after a good work out, that’s the good kind of pain, the kind that clears his mind and makes him believe for a couple of hours that the world makes sense.

He knows pain, or so he thought.

 

The first thing he sees when he wakes up is Ian’s face, blurry around the edges, grey as ash, and looking older and more tired than ever.

“How are you feeling, boy?” Ian asks. His voice feels muted down, muffled.

Lasse Aeon takes a whole minute to process his question, and almost another one to reply: his brain feels like a slab of concrete, heavy, weighted down and dry.

“Like I was microwaved” he finally manages to croak, his throat dry and coarse with the lack of use.

Ian laughs-it’s a wet, convulse little chuckle, more similar to a sob than to an actual laugh, and Lasse can vaguely feel the man’s hand on his. Making a tremendous effort, feeling like his muscles are rusty wires, like there’s crushed glass between each joint, Lasse wraps his fingers around his.

“Do you remember what happened?” Ian asks then, almost too gently, in the tone one uses to talk to a sick child.

Lasse stares at him for a while in silence, before turning his eyes to the white lights above him. They hurt his eyes, he feels pain blooming behind them, a slow, steady thumping inside his skull, like a hangover.

Yes, he remembers. The images throttle each other inside its brain, gaudy, too bright, too loud, the events mixed up in a tangle in which time and space don’t seem to matter. It feels like a fever dream-a nightmare he just woke up from and that he can’t shake off.

The next thing he knows is that he can hear Ian crying. The man is sobbing, quietly (this is med bay, after all), but the hiccups make his whole body shudder. His right hand is still in Lasse’s, but the other one is covering his face, and he is shaking like a leaf.

Lasse wants to say something, anything, but he realizes that he is exhausted, that his whole body is burning, that the lights are too bright and that if he opens his mouth, he might start crying too.

He closes his eyes and sinks into the darkness again.

 

The next few months are hell.

The sickness, the weakness, the sensation of chewing glass and throwing up needles constantly, the searing, burning pain that seems to come from everywhere at once every time he moves, somehow aren’t the worst part. Finding out that this is just a sample of what the next few years of his life are going to be like, that somehow the only good thing about it is that there won’t be many years ahead, isn’t the worst part.

It’s the news.

Still, when Linda, Ian’s wife (Moreno isn’t around anymore), explains to him what happened to the crew of the Ptolemy, what Lasse feels isn’t pain in itself, or sadness. It’s more like his chest has been hollowed out. He watches Ian leave the room in a hurry, fishing his handkerchief out of his pocket. But Lasse feels dried out, empty. He’s seen pictures of buildings after being destroyed by nuclear bombs: charred husks, blackened skeletons that once housed families, and noise, and life, that are now full of nothing more than shadows burned into the concrete, and that’s precisely what he feels like: a husk.

Lasse almost feels proud of himself for his control. When he sees Feldt again, months later, she breaks down into tears and cries into his chest for what feels like hours, and he is glad to see her, and he can pat her head and hug her until she is calm again, without breaking down himself. He is even glad to see Tieria, which is saying a lot, considering Tieria and him never got along before.

At least his status as an emotional pillar for the team can remain intact, he supposes.

 

It takes two years for the new Ptolemaios to be ready.

Two years during which Lasse believes he’s grown used to pain, again: the physical pain is bearable, thanks to the painkillers and the nanomachines, to him picking up again the habit of working out to pretend that everything is fine. And in those years, he believes that the wounds of losing Lockon, Chris, Lichty, and the rest of the Gundam Meisters have closed, that he is okay. Even when Feldt shows up one day with her hair gathered in a ponytail like Chris’, Lasse manages to smile.

It takes for him to be seated again at the controls of the Ptolemaios II for everything to crash.

The new Ptolemy is almost identical to the original: Ian and him have worked for months in finishing it, making sure everything functions perfectly, like clockwork, and Lasse is proud of the result. Feldt and him are the first ones in the bridge, and Lasse, confident and upbeat, takes a seat on his usual place, right at the helm.

Then he glances to the right, where Lichty used to sit.

For a few, terrifying seconds, he can actually _see_ his friend, right there, smiling at him, and then, just as fast as he appeared, he is gone.

_Gone._

He can hear Feldt speaking, but it’s like a conversation happening in a movie in another room. Lasse’s hands cramp around the controls until his knuckles turn white, and grits his teeth until his ears pop, but none of that matters: the crushed glass in his joints, the taste of blood in the back of his throat, the new Ptolemy, the cut on his chin, Celestial Being.

_They’re gone. They’re all gone, forever, and they will never be here again._

It’s like being caught in a mudslide: it starts slow, but once the foundations lose their stability, everything comes crashing down, and what used to be hollow is suddenly filled with noise, and light, and a pain that’s so bright and intense that Lasse loses the ability to breathe. In a split second, Lasse goes from feeling the happiest he’s felt in months, to feeling like he is dying.

He can’t tell when he starts sobbing, but he notices again, in the same distant, detached way from before, that Feldt has run now to his side and is kneeling next to him. Lasse curls forward in his seat, wrapping his arms around himself, because he feels like he’s falling apart and can’t think of another way to hold the pieces together.

He remembers too many things at once, and every single one of them is a new form of fresh, blinding pain.

Christina twirling in a new dress. Lichty’s ridiculously high pitched, squeaky laugh. Both of them, sliding on their socks on the freshly cleaned floors of Wang Liu Mei’s mansion and landing in a heap after crashing into Feldt. The times Chris hugged him, the time she wished him a happy birthday and Lichty stuck a lighter on a piece of toast because they didn’t have a cake. Lichty sticking his tongue out and frowning as he always did when he was focused while working, and Christina slapping the side of her screen because the brightness had suddenly dropped, and getting scolded by Sumeragi.

Lockon’s laughter, his jokes, Allelujah’s quiet chuckles and Setsuna’s scowls.

The scent of brandy that floated around Sumeragi’s head like a halo.

All of it, _gone_ , in the most painful possible way.

The pain is so intense and so _absolute_ , that for what could be an eternity or just a few minutes of raw, terrifying grief, Lasse swears that he _is_ his pain, that he is _made_ of it.

The horror passes as fast as it started, leaving him completely drained, exhausted, _sore_ and out of breath. His face is covered in tears, his hands have left bruises on his own arms, and he is still shaking.

Feldt’s hand is on his back, rubbing soothing circles, but Lasse doesn’t have the energy to look at her. He is thankful for her silence, for her quiet strength, for the warm hand and the way she kneels next to him, close enough to support him, but without invading the circle of ruins that is his personal space right now.

“Does it ever get better?” Lasse has to ask, after about ten minutes of silence, during which neither of them move. His voice sounds again coarse, dry. His throat burns.

“It does” Feldt replies, and after a moment, she adds: “It does. It will.”

Lasse knows that it won’t, not for him. He can feel it in his bones. And it hurts to hear Feldt say the opposite.

Still, Feldt’s words are a different kind of pain, one that he doesn’t mind.

You can’t feel hope, Lasse concludes, without a double share of pain.


End file.
